Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction Series) (23 page)

"You don't have anything to be sorry for. That's what I'm trying to tell you. If you're still angry, if you can't forgive me, I want to know. Right now, I have to know."

A wave of dizziness swept over Noah. "Cale, I was very... lonely for a long time. Maybe angry. But I forgave you." He closed his eyes. "I did it to myself. Stupid to run away. A coward's way out."

He heard Caleb's boots strike the floor, then the soft creak of the door. "You're part of this family. That isn't
ever
going to change. Quit expecting it to."

"Cale?"

"Yeah?"

The church bell chimed, signaling the lowering of Henri Beaumont's casket into sacred earth. Noah sought to distance his mind from Elle, but she slipped inside, and he shivered from the impact.

"Noah? You okay?"

He tangled his hands in the sheet, ignoring the stab of pain beneath his ribs. "Has Elle been here?"

A minute ticked by. "This morning." Caleb coughed. "Only, she left. She had to leave in a hurry."

Noah slipped into a deep, drugged sleep before he could ask Caleb what he meant.

* * *

Caleb closed the door before Noah could ask more questions and backed straight into Christabel. The tray in her hands tottered, and he grabbed it to keep it from crashing to the floor. "Darn, Chris, what are you sneaking around for?"

Christabel smiled and tapped the edge of his jaw, as always, dismantling his wrath with her touch. "How's he doing?"

"Seems to be in some pain and really, really grouchy."

Christabel nodded. "Men make lousy patients. Why, do you reckon?"

Caleb shuffled from one foot to the other. "Chris, I, well you see, we had lots of things to talk about, me and Noah." His apprehensive expression was reflected in the silver tray.

She perched her hands on her hips. "You didn't tell him?"

He shook his head.

"Chicken."

He lifted his chin. "What do you want me to say? How you feeling, Noah? By the by, your married lady friend, the one none of us knew the first damned thing about, decided to pay a visit. Oh, and guess what else? Elle walked into the room to find her holding your hand and lit outta here like she'd seen a body hanging from the ceiling."

"Honey, if that's what you would have said, I'm glad you waited."

"Thanks." He stalked down the hallway, the tray clutched to his chest.

"You've got to tell him before that Bartram lady appears on the doorstep again, Cale. I met her on my way to the funeral. Plainly, she isn't leaving. Truly, this is a delicate situation."

Caleb cursed beneath his breath and wondered when exactly the tables had turned. For the first time in his life, he had to rescue his little brother from trouble.

* * *

Elle slumped against her father's mahogany desk and kicked at the papers scattered by her feet. The echo of the grandfather clock provided the only sound beyond her shaken, terse breaths. She hated this room. Despised the shelves of leather-bound books, untouched except for a yearly waxing; the emotionlessly amassed collection of art and antiques; the costly poplar-paneled walls; even the explosion of naked color on the ceiling.

She had perched on the horsehair sofa, caught between apprehension, rebellion, and love, during more dreadful paternal encounters than she cared to remember. From the time her father discovered her sneaking out her bedroom window, Noah and Caleb hidden in the shrubs below, to the time she quietly informed him she would not marry Magnus Leland, each episode had been a battle of wills, a contest of strength. Even now, his hostility held as heavy a presence as his cologne.

Elle grasped the official document, the crisp parchment stamped, signed and sealed. This scrap of paper had severed her affinity for her father more than all his cold-blooded threats. She rolled the paper into a cigar-shaped cylinder and blew a breath down the barrel. His betrayal, quite simply, left her numb.

Swaying to the side, she sloshed brandy in the crystal goblet and swabbed at a spill using the sleeve of Noah's coat. Her father would chastise her for using a goblet instead of a snifter, for sitting cross-legged on the floor, for being foolish enough to wear Noah's coat and, worse, for leaning in to sniff the sleeve with unerring consistency. She rubbed the wool beneath her nose, breathing in the warm embrace of Noah's smile, the heartfelt compassion in his eyes, the gentle caress of his fingers.

She needed him as much as she ever had, and yet, he could be in Morehead City or Chicago or, for that matter, on the moon.

Clinking the goblet against her teeth, she took a gulp of brandy, then choked and coughed.
Damn and blast,
why hadn't Noah's betrayal—in truth, no betrayal at all—left her numb? Why, why,
why
could she still feel everything? He'd made no secret of his correspondence with the woman in Chicago, sending off the letters pretty as you please, fodder for town gossip. Nevertheless, to see a woman sitting beside his bed, the bed he had tucked Elle into the night she'd broken her arm, the bed she dreamed he would one day return to sleep in—

With a curse, Elle flung the goblet against the wall. An amber trail trickled down the poplar paneling and to the Wilton rug.

Moonlight spilled through the window, a wash of silver across the rolled document in her fist. She flattened it on her thigh and skimmed the lines of text. Her father had left her penniless, or close to it. Enough for his burial and the employment of a solicitor to arrange for the sale of his business and his properties, the antiques, the art. In the bottom paragraph, he addressed the issue of his only child, Marielle-Claire. She would wed by May of 1899 or lose any entitlement to his estate. If she did not meet the terms, the estate would be transferred to a Banque National de Paris account in the name of Gerard Claude Beaumont, the deceased's cousin.

Elle tossed her father's last will and testament to the floor, where it glided beneath a tasseled footstool. She hoped Gerard Claude Beaumont, whoever he was, appreciated his good fortune.

Her father had misread her. She didn't care about his money. Of course, she would have liked to control the modest amount her mother left her, use it to complete her education and make the necessary repairs to the school. Perhaps repair Widow Wynne's roof. The rest, the estate of Henri Paul Beaumont, did not concern her in the least.

The savage cruelty
of her father's last communication stung. She could imagine him dictating the marriage clause to his hawk-faced solicitor, a stranger who stank of Macassar oil and aided in sending paternal threats from the grave. A threat preserved in black ink for everyone to see. Elle felt humiliated, furious, and very disappointed.

Again.

These emotions gnawed at her, negating the grief that had bubbled forth when she got a good look at her father's lifeless body. Grief that swiftly turned to horror as Noah collapsed, a crimson streak slicking the side of the boat, following the path of his descent.

There could be no greater fear than thinking she'd lost the one man who would never be hers to lose. Much greater than the nagging uneasiness she'd felt long before Caleb rowed their boat toward shore.

She twisted her hands in the folds of Noah's coat, picturing the wash of blood down his side.

He's not going to die.
No, but he would leave. And, sooner or later, he would touch another woman as he had touched her.

Elle wrapped her arms around her stomach, threw her head back, and laughed until her lungs burned. Caroline Bartram: another of her father's asinine errors in judgment. Unquestionably, he had not expected his daughter to be in his library at dawn, cleaning before a rush of consoling visitors stormed his house. The file lay open on the desk. Two large circles caught her eye. Printed in block letters inside them was a woman's name.

Smaller print below the vicious circles had given a great many particulars about Mrs. Caroline Beatrice Bartram. Age, family history, known associations, close friends, and presumed lovers. A detailed and rather fascinating report; it was news to Elle that you could buy a written account of someone's life. And Mrs. Bartram had led an interesting one, to say the least. This seemed a frightful intrusion, and she wondered, lacking any genuine interest, which drawer in her father's desk held Noah Garrett's life printed on cheap bond.

Noah and this woman knew each other well enough that an investigator had connected them. She dropped her head to her knees and swallowed past the choke of tears. Would she be listed in Noah's report?

Doubtful.

She sniffed and wiped her nose on Noah's sleeve, his scent sending a jolt of—
oh, God, she knew
—desire through her. Desire and the foolhardy love she wished to crush like a stick of chalk beneath her heel.

This morning, confused by her father's final thrust and eager to talk to Noah, Elle impulsively decided to take Zach's advice. She would tell Noah she loved him. She would never forget the sight of his blood on her hands. Never.

She loved him, and she wanted him to know.

She put on her nicest dress, which wasn't saying much, pinned her mother's brooch on her collar, arranged her hair in a shabby imitation of a French twist, and topped the ensemble off with a narrow little nothing of a hat she had purchased two years ago but never worn.

Following everyone's advice but her own, Elle dabbed the honeysuckle fragrance Noah liked behind each ear. Beneath the haze of grief and uncertainty, she felt joyously relieved. Joyously relieved, grieved, and uncertain, she opened the door to his childhood bedroom and her world tilted on its axis. A complete, soaring tilt. Backing out of the room, she then walked into town, and telegraphed Savannah.

My father has died. Stop. No change in dire circumstances. Stop.

If anyone found a visit to the telegraph office on the day of her father's funeral a strange occurrence, they didn't say anything. As for the odd looks, who cared? She'd been receiving those since the day she set foot in Pilot Isle.

She didn't think she could watch Noah walk away from her life again.

Therefore, she would walk away from his.

Chapter 11

"There was a curious popular notion."

C. Wyville Thomson

The Depths of the Sea

Caroline Bartram did not consider herself a person of exemplary moral fiber. She had grown up in a mill village in Solitude, West Virginia, in a squalid one-room shack. No running water, just a creek out back, newspapers stuffed into every hole and crevice, four children to a bed and three stretched beside it on the floor. Caroline had done things she was not proud of to escape.

She took a sip of tea, her pinkie angled away from the chipped handle. She remembered Ruby Garnet's lessons and used them well. She glanced from one man to the other, smoothed her hand across her bodice, and balanced her cup perfectly in its saucer. Her presence troubled them, Noah's brothers. The broad, rough one shuffled his feet and drank from the cup using both hands. The tall, thoughtful one, Zachariah, alternated between staring at her and staring out the window.

Troubled, indeed.

Patience waning, she asked, "Do you think a short visit would tire Noah too much?"

Zachariah pinned his brother with a hard glare. "Did you announce Mrs. Bartram, Caleb?"

Caleb's gaze flicked to her, to his brother, to the floor. He shook his head.

Zachariah sighed and swiveled toward her, his face set in lines of a serious nature. "Of course, Mrs. Bartram, since you've come all the way from Chicago. I just wanted"—he threw another heated glance at his brother—"to let Noah know you'd arrived so it wasn't a big surprise. I'm sure you understand."

"Is he all right?"

They both halted, studying her.

She placed the cup and saucer on the end table and tugged at the button on her glove. "I would love to see him now that he's awake." Vaguely, she questioned whether this constituted a breach of etiquette for a widow to visit a man in his bedroom. Ruby Garnet had never covered such a lesson that Caroline recalled.

Zachariah nodded and rose to his feet. "Right this way."

She brushed her gloved hands over her skirt and stood with a whisper of silk and crinoline. "Good day, Mr. Garrett."

"Mrs. Bartram," Caleb said, averting his eyes.

What they must think of her, she wondered, and climbed a narrow staircase in desperate need of a woman's touch. A spot of color would do nicely, a flower or two, a picture. She almost tapped on Zachariah's stiff shoulder and told him. Such rigid posture. She frowned. After all these years, people's derision still hurt. However, this time, she had lumped the scorn on her own shoulders. By accepting an offer to come to a place she didn't belong. Belated, perchance, but she hoped Noah would not be angry with her.

Zachariah halted before a door. Touching the dented knob, he said, "It's only been three days since the accident, and he might be sleeping, like he was during your visit yesterday. If he's not, he won't last long. The doctor gave him these pain powders and they snuff him out as quick as you can snuff out a candle."